The foundation, based in Magdeburg, was born in 2015, after efforts in Germany, and elsewhere, to find the huge number of works lost during World War II were often criticized as lackluster. The so-called Lost Art Database was created two years later in Germany and has been operated since by a series of German organizations, the most recent being the foundation. Searching the database is free, and its website averages some 14,000 visits to its website per month, the foundation said. Works are listed based on requests to the foundation, which evaluates the information presented to it but does not do its own provenance research. Image Egon Schiele’s “Woman in a Black Pinafore” (1911) was ordered returned to Grünbaum’s heirs by a New York judge earlier this year.

Source: New York Times August 26, 2018 13:52 UTC